A New French Headache: When Is Hate on TV Illegal?

By ELAINE SCIOLINO; Carole Corm contributed reporting for this article.

Published: December 9, 2004

The television broadcasts are infused with violence and hate, and the predicament facing the French government is how to stop them.

Al Manar, a popular Arabic channel run by the Hezbollah militia out of Lebanon, beams its anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic messages by satellite into thousands of homes, cafes, restaurants and shops throughout France every day.

But a yearlong campaign by the French government to shut down Al Manar has been thwarted by the law.

Last month, France's public broadcasting regulator, the Audio-Visual Higher Council, similar to the Federal Communications Commission, granted Al Manar a license to operate in France as long as it abides by French law. Al Manar had to agree ''not to incite hate, violence or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion or nationality.''

Four days later, however, the channel broadcast one report claiming that for years Israel had spread the AIDS virus and other diseases throughout the Arab world, and a second calling for war against Jews and the destruction of Israel. The broadcasts set off new demands by French officials, members of Parliament, academics and commentators to shut down the channel.

''This affects the security of our fragile suburbs, the interest of France, the respect for human rights, even the honor of our country,'' Ladislas Poniatowski, a senator from Normandy, told a public senate session last week with Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. ''We must stop the broadcasts of Al Manar without delay. I'm demanding it.''

The Council of State, France's highest judicial administrative authority, will rule Saturday whether the channel can be banned under French law. But Mr. Raffarin confessed, ''We don't have the judicial means to intervene immediately.''

Al Manar estimates that it reaches 10 million viewers in dozens of countries. The channel is transmitted through international satellite providers in a package with other Arabic channels, often free. It is available in the United States through Intelsat, despite the fact that Hezbollah was listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization in 1997.

But it is in France that the battle lines have been drawn, because of its five million to six million Muslims and 600,000 Jews, the largest Jewish population in Europe. The status of Al Manar here has become a test of whether any government can legally or technically impose limits on satellite television broadcasts on its soil.

Al Manar beamed its first signal from its headquarters in a Beirut suburb in 1991, but its global reach was felt only nine years later when it began to broadcast via satellite.

The French government largely ignored the channel until it broadcast a virulently anti-Semitic Syrian-made series during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan in October 2003. The series had scenes depicting Jews as plotting to take over the world and the murder of a Christian child on a rabbi's orders so the blood could be used to bake matzos for Passover.

''It was more than disgusting,'' said one senior French official who saw it. ''It was impossible to look at. When Raffarin saw it he immediately said, 'We have to shut it down.'''

But when the French government asked Eutelsat, the French satellite company offering the channel, to ban it, there was no legal way to do so. So in July France modified a law to make it easier to ban unlicensed television channels like Al Manar.

The Council of State refused. It ruled that Al Manar should be allowed to broadcast as long as it adhered to regulations. After the channel signed the agreement with the commission pledging to do so, the commission gave it a license.

''That decision officially authorized anti-Semitic propaganda,'' said Roger Cukierman, chairman of France's main Jewish organization, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions. Banning the channel is possible, he added, ''because France is a country where things are regulated -- we don't have the First Amendment here.''

But Dominique Baudis, president of the audio-visual commission, defended the decision to license Al Manar, arguing that his panel lacked the legal tools to block it.

''What to do when images 'fall from the sky'?'' he asked in an opinion article in Le Monde last week. ''In no other country where these programs are broadcast, in Europe or the United States, have public authorities intervened. We are alone in attempting something without truly having effective legal means.''

American Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, have joined in criticizing the decision to allow the broadcasts in France. But they also acknowledge that little has been done to prevent Al Manar from broadcasting in the United States, in part because the laws prosecuting racist and hate crimes are much weaker in the United States than in France.

''We don't have the same laws in the United States,'' Abraham Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a telephone interview. ''If France takes this new approach, hopefully we can learn from it.''

On Wednesday, the American Jewish Committee sent a letter to Treasury Secretary John W. Snow asking that Al Manar be shut down in the United States under existing counterterrorism laws and executive orders. In a telephone interview on Tuesday, David A. Harris, the executive director, acknowledged, ''Frankly, this was not on the radar screen until it emerged as an issue in France.''

So far, the Bush administration has not taken a position on whether it can shut down the channel in the United States. Asked at a briefing in October whether the United States could stop the broadcasts, Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, said, ''At this point, I'm not in a position to speculate about what steps may or may not be taken.''

As for Al Manar itself, Mohammed Haidar, its president, admits mistakes have been made and has pledged to do better to comply with the agreement reached with the audio-visual commission.

''It is important for us to be seen, not only in France, but in Europe and the rest of the world,'' Mr. Haidar said in a telephone interview in Arabic from Beirut. ''We would be disappointed if we were barred from being transmitted in France. This would be unjust and unfair.''

Photos: The studios of Al Manar in Beirut, Lebanon. The station, backed by Hezbollah radicals, has transmitted anti-Semitic diatribes by satellite. (Photo by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos); In 1999 a broadcast by Al Manar, above, showed a suicide bomber, Amr Hussein Hammud, before he attacked an Israeli patrol. Behind him are portraits of Iranian leaders. French backers of the station, left, ask, ''When a Muslim is attacked, is not all France also attacked?'' (Photo by Al Manar); (Photo by Joel Robine/Agence France-Presse--Getty Images)